


Listen To Nothing

by ice_hot_13



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-31
Updated: 2012-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-30 09:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/330392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ice_hot_13/pseuds/ice_hot_13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonardo won't talk to Ezio, but Ezio keeps listening; Shaun doesn't tell Desmond anything, but Desmond keeps listening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sunlight splashes through the window and the air is clean and light, spring turning halfway through the season into something of beauty and clarity, shedding the brisk winds of the first half season, but Leonardo notices nothing. The canvas before him is blank, the workshop around him does not exist. The canvas is blank as it usually never is, completely empty, and he sees nothing within its emptiness, just the vast nothingness, void of ideas and imagination.

"Buon giorno, Signor!" Antonio's voice cuts through the silence, the door of the workshop creaking open. Leonardo doesn't move, gaze resting somewhere past the canvas, never hearing his customer's voice. "My wife loved your painting, and her friend requests that you might make one for her as well."

"Her friend?" Leonardo looks over his shoulder, examines the man in the doorway, "who is this?"

"Carmilla-"

"A woman," Leonardo says stonily, and the man nods as if waiting for the rest of the sentence, "No."

"No?" Antonio blinks, "you are sure?"

"Si. No."

Antonio manages a bewildered goodbye and shuffles out of the workshop, perplexity crossing his face. Leonardo turns back to his canvas, frowning.

"Leonardo, amico mio!" Ezio's voice breaks the silence anew, and in the next instant, he has crossed the room to put a hand on Leonardo's shoulder. "I do not usually see customers leaving your workshop looking as if they have seen flying pigs. What did you tell Antonio?"

"Nothing." Leonardo rubs a hand over his face, smudges a smear of blue paint on his jaw, "he wanted a painting for a customer I will not deal with."

"I see." Ezio looks at the empty canvas, then back at Leonardo, who is staring at the ground, teeth clenched. "Leonardo, what is troubling you?" He squeezes Leonardo's shoulder and Leonardo steps away, making as if fetching more paint. Ezio watches him poke through a cabinet, drawing out the answer.

"Women," Leonardo finally says darkly, and Ezio bites back a laugh, guiltily.

"Really," he manages, fighting back a swell of amusement he knows he should not feel.

"Yes. I despise them." Leonardo's furious tone breaks down any amusement Ezio had been feeling, and Ezio is struck speechless. Before he can construct any sort of response, before even deciding whether he should inquire further or offer assistance, Leonardo shuts the cabinet door and looks at him again. "Did you need help with a Codex page?"

"Uh-" Ezio stammers at the uncharacteristic bluntness from the usually cheerfully rambling Leonardo, "I- no, I did not-" Leonardo just nods and turns back to the shelves, and Ezio becomes painfully aware that Leonardo has just bid him an unobtrusive goodbye. It's hard to recognize a refusal from Leonardo, as he has never denied Ezio attention. "I will be back when I find one," Ezio edges towards the door reluctantly, eyes still on Leonardo, beseechingly. "I'm sorry to leave you so soon," Ezio tosses out, purely for his own benefit as Leonardo has no response, "but I promised Catalina I would see her." This is only half fictional; Catalina hangs on his promises, but he has, at the moment, made none.

"Goodbye, then." Leonardo turns back to the canvas, and Ezio stands in the doorway for a while, staring in speechless confusion before dragging himself away from the workshop.

 _Women._ Ezio continues to puzzle over Leonardo's answer as he pulls himself up the wall of the church, gloved hand nearly slipping over the ledge in a lapse of concentration.  _Women?_ He hauls himself up to sit on the uppermost ledge, stares down at the trailing ribbons of people, winding between buildings below.  _Leonardo is troubled by women?_ Ezio props his chin in his hand and chews his lip, even as something nags at him from the back of his conscious to stop putting so much thought into this, but it's impossible to stop. Leonardo hates nothing, is angered by nothing, is perfectly content to observe anything, always on an even-keel and calm even to a maddening degree. Ezio drops his head into his hands, sighing out a breath.  _Leonardo is troubled by women._ No matter how many times he repeats the thought, it refuses to sound right, too startling, too shattering. Nothing has happened; Leonardo isn't happy, merely infuriated, surely nothing has been lost and nothing gained, but all the same, Ezio can't shake the unsettled feeling. Seeing Leonardo furious feels wholly and absolutely wrong, like the world has tilted a shade too far, into a degree never meant to be seen.

Ezio gives up. He climbs back down from the roof, flings himself into a headlong dash across the streets until he gets to the building he'd just left, throws open the door to Leonardo's workshop. Again, Leonardo ignores this, still staring at the same empty canvas, not like he sees something there, but like, for once, he sees the same nothingness Ezio sees.

"Leonardo-" Ezio begins, before realizing he doesn't know what he's going to say. Leonardo tosses him half a look, arches an eyebrow.

"A codex page already?" The question makes Ezio redden, feel absurdly ridiculous for standing in the middle of the workshop, still short of breath from careening across the street, chest rising and falling, energy coiled like the springs in the blades at each wrist, watched by Leonardo's expressionless eyes.

"Not exactly," he says hesitantly, slowly approaching Leonardo. Leonardo abruptly turns back to the canvas, frowning again. "You sounded troubled." He winces inwardly at how repetitive this sounds, the same words from before, but Leonardo doesn't react.

"I'm fine, Ezio," Leonardo says, dismissive like Ezio is saying this from some farfetched sense of obligation, like it means nothing. Ezio's shoulders slump, but he refuses to admit anything aloud. He studies Leonardo for a moment, feels as if he is trying to shoulder his way through a brick wall. Absently, he reaches out and wipes away the streak of paint on Leonardo's jaw, transferring the grey-blue pigment from Leonardo's skin to his own hand.

"If you ever want to talk..." he offers softly, doesn't finish,  _I always listen, even when you don't say anything,_ even though it's true, even though he wants to. Ezio has been accused of following his every whim, an accusation that follows him every time he turns around, but there is nothing more untrue. Ezio never follows through with what he truly wants; he is forever tempted, but he knows.

It would destroy him.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Shaun never tells Desmond anything. He talks, of course. He lectures Desmond frequently, dispenses information, chastises him and corrects him, but never tells him anything. Desmond hangs on his every word for a while, convinced that maybe Shaun will say some tiny gem of something and if he's not listening carefully he'll miss it, but Shaun never tells him anything.

After a while, Desmond stops listening, because Shaun's never going to share anything with him, not anything, not ever, and Desmond doesn't want to keep waiting anymore.

It's a rainy Thursday afternoon, following a dull morning of repairs and maintenance. Rebecca is gone on errands and Lucy is working in another room, and normally, Desmond would be using this time to throw out insignificant facts about himself, hoping to lure Shaun into saying something back. He's thrown out as much as he can in as many aspects conceivable- he hates the rain, he doesn't mind snow, once he played baseball in the rain, he's never much liked football, he saw a really good movie a week ago, next week is his half birthday, when he turned sixteen he didn't get a car, he didn't tell his parents about his first car accident, he's only been pulled over once and only got a warning - and Shaun has never responded with anything about himself.

Desmond knows next to nothing about him.

As rain hounds the building, Desmond stares up at the ceiling and tries to pick out the sound of typing amidst the broken glass of the splitting raindrops. Shaun is working at his computer, and Desmond doesn't even know why Shaun's so interested in history anyways, and Shaun isn't ever going to tell him. Desmond isn't ever going to know anything about him.

Shaun curses under his breath and shoves his chair away from the desk in a huff, and stalks over to the bulletin board on the wall. It makes Desmond cringe inwardly, that he can interpret this sequence so completely; when Shaun is frustrated, he leaves the computer and goes back to the wall of pictures and text to search it for something he missed, and when he is furious, he stalks out of the room and slams the door behind him, and if he goes to his room, he won't come back, and if he goes to the kitchen, he'll return for another round with the computer. The temptation is terrible, whenever this happens. Particularly when Shaun retreats to his room to presumably sulk and review the technical problems over and over again. Desmond wants to follow him, to pull him down onto the bed and tell him that he can solve it, he can solve anything, and even if he doesn't, it doesn't matter, he doesn't have to do anything to be incredible. Desmond thinks nothing of hurtling across rooftops and jamming blades through throats, but has never been able to so much as approach Shaun. Doing so would mean too much.

Desmond looks over the back of the couch, to see Shaun, arms crossed, studying the array of pictures and words like he can glean some meaning from them that he'd overlooked before.

"Why don't you just call it a night?" Desmond calls over.

"It's three in the afternoon. Your work ethic is despicable."

"I used to work nights, not afternoons," Desmond retorts, as if this redeems him in any way. This wasn't an ideal working situation; he doesn't miss returning late, late at night and having the energy to do no more than collapse in bed and sleep until the afternoon. Maybe it's because working at a bar led him to see the beginnings of innumerable one-night-stands, maybe it's because he's never had anything more meaningful, but there's some small part of him, a part he hates more than anything, that wonders what it would have been like, to wake up with someone. He hates that part of himself more than anything, because it tells him that sharp-tongued Shaun would be warm and soft in the morning, because it's convinced him that's what he wants, more than anything. "I became a bartender because it was the first place that called for an interview," Desmond says, "I coulda been a bank teller, too."

"Really." Shaun takes down a picture from the wall, studies it, pins it back up again, all in silence.

"My first few weeks, I broke a lot of cups."

"Do tell."

"I owed them more than they paid me." Desmond slumps back down on the couch, stares up at the ceiling and decides to give up. "Have you seen Lucy?"

"Why would I have seen her?"

"I'm just  _asking…"_ Desmond stands, frowns at Shaun's back. "God, you're defensive." He leaves the room and doesn't look back, doesn't have to, because his thoughts stay with Shaun anyways, just like always. Desmond's fairly certain that hating part of himself so vehemently can't be good for him, but giving in, he knows, that would be worse than anything self-hatred could strike him with.


	2. Chapter 2

Ezio would be shocked if he were to ever arrive at Leonardo's workshop to find the artist in the process of leaving, putting paint bottles and brushes into boxes and locking the windows tight, but at seven on a dreary morning he is only just waking up on the floor of Catalina's bedroom. He recalls climbing into her window at night, submitting to her seduction from force of habit, and slipping out of the bed in the small hours of the morning, feeling too restless to sleep next to her. He looks up to the bed, and Catalina is still asleep, early morning light falling just short of her face. Ezio crawls away from the bed and pushes the window open. He climbs out without sound and without hesitation, drops down to a ledge and then the street, falling onto the path towards Leonardo's workshop without conscious thought.  _Maybe he is in a better mood today,_ Ezio thinks hopefully,  _surely whatever was wrong is now resolved._ As much as he would like to pretend this is not concerning, he has been plagued by worry since Leonardo shunted him out of the workshop last night, was unable to sleep except fitfully and thinking of nothing else.  
The door to Leonardo's workshop is locked. The door is  _never_ locked; Leonardo leaves it open for Ezio, along with all the windows, should he ever need the hiding place. Ezio spends a minute staring at the door handle, countless half-formed theories careening through his mind, none of which make sense -  _maybe he forgot to open the door, maybe he is out somewhere, maybe he doesn't want me here, maybe something happened to him -_ his thoughts slam to a halt, panic starting to hammer through him, because if anything were to ever happen to Leonardo, if  _anything_ were to  _ever_ happen to  _his_ Leonardo-

"Are you looking for Signore Da Vinci?" a voice rings out, and Ezio half turns, heart still seizing in his chest. A messenger stands looking at him, seems strangely calm amidst Ezio's terror.

"Si," he manages, voice strangled, "where is he?"

"You just missed him." The boy points down the street, "he was going to the docks. I helped him carry-"

"The docks?" Already, Ezio is mentally rifling through the hundred ways he knows to reach the docks, sorting to find the fastest, "why?"

"I do not know. He is going somewhere, I suppose."

"Oh." All plans stop, because suddenly, Ezio realizes that Leonardo never told him this.  _He doesn't want me to know, does he?_ He isn't supposed to run and find Leonardo, never supposed to come with him wherever he's going, but Ezio shuts down all that thought, because it hurts, it hurts too much. "Thank you," he says, and the messenger boy nods and walks away, and when he looks back at the workshop door, Ezio is gone.

Ezio doesn't allow himself to think as he races towards the docks, skidding around people and corners and struggling to keep himself upright. The same halted train of thought continues to pound through his mind,  _Leonardo is leaving he's leaving he's leaving,_ and he knows that if he were to let it continue, he'd keep wondering  _why,_ become sick with the worry that Leonardo didn't want him to ever find out. It's worse that it looks to be so true.

The docks are calm, and this is Ezio's first signal that panic is imminent. The docks are always, always a whirlwind of movement, of yelling voices and running feet, but the only sounds are water lapping at the dock, some people milling about, watching several ships slowly move away. Ezio skids to a stop and nearly runs into a man watching a nearly boat leave.  _He can't he can't he can't he's here somewhere he has to be somewhere-_ Ezio's chest heaves with sharp panting as he looks around wildly, and then he spots Leonardo. He's not on the docks, safe where Ezio can find him, he's on the ship that's leaving, standing by the railing and talking to someone, and he's leaving. Ezio can't breathe anymore, and his vision blurs as he watches the ship drift farther and farther away. He leans over, hands on his knees, breath coming in shaky gasps, as he squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to fall apart. He forces himself to stand, but can't look at the departing ship anymore, turns instead to the man beside him.

"Signore," he says, fights to keep his voice even, "can you tell me where that ship is going?"  _Where is it taking him?_ he wants to plead, fall to his knees and beg to be taken there, wherever it is, now, right now.

"Venezia," the man replies, looking up from a list of shipping orders, "number one destination for these ships."

"Is there another?" Ezio asks, against his will. He wants desperately to find Leonardo, so much it hurts, leaves a gaping hole where his heart was, because Leonardo so clearly doesn't want Ezio to find him.

"Si. Not another passenger one, though. That one, for cargo." The man points to a smaller ship, one loaded with boxes of cargo, captained by a man who barks orders at grumbling dockworkers.

"Grazie." Ezio walks along the dock to the second ship, focuses his attention on merely keeping from stumbling, because asking anything more of himself would be too much. The captain allows him onto the ship, mutters that he'd better not get in the way, and directs him to the back of the boat and tells him to stay there. Ezio nods gratefully and climbs over the boxes to sit behind the stacks, never caring to do so much as protest that there is plenty of open space at the front of the ship. He slumps down against the crates, stares out at the churning grey water as shouting voices fly overhead.

 _Is something wrong? Is that why Leonardo never told me?_ Ezio puts his head down on his folded arms, draws in a trembling breath.  _He tells me everything._ Nothing is stable in Ezio's world but Leonardo. Everything else has the irrevocable tendency to fall to pieces, to collapse under him and leave him stranded. Everything has failed him, broken or whisked away or turn unrecognizable. His family fell apart, his father kept a secret from him and entrusted Ezio to save them and he couldn't, his brothers stolen from him, his sister far away and his mother distant with grief. His friends had vanished, as Ezio himself had removed himself from their world. His home was void of life. His allies constantly turned traitor, ripping away trust and promises and the documents that would have saved his father and brothers. Even the truth fell to pieces. Leonardo has been all that Ezio could rely on. He is always sunny and bright and welcoming, and Ezio falls into his presence like an embrace, clings to Leonardo to bring him something of stability, something that won't abandon him, won't leave him alone.

All the signs tell Ezio that Leonardo doesn't want to be found, but Ezio has nothing else that matters. He wants to tell himself that Leonardo did tell him, did explain, but it's impossible to believe. Ezio clings to every word Leonardo says, and  _I'm leaving you_ has never fallen into the space between them. There has been nothing to tell Ezio why Leonardo would leave him, if Leonardo is even leaving  _him_ at all, if he is that important to the artist.

 _Is he leaving me? Leaving Firenze? Leaving to find work? Leaving to find someone else?_ Leonardo's words strike him again, his uncharacteristic snarl of yesterday, and Ezio doesn't know if Leonardo is finding someone else. He keeps telling himself that there has to be something wrong, because it would be easier to deal with than accepting that this may be what's  _right_ for Leonardo.

The ocean continues to propel the ship towards Venezia. Some part of Ezio doesn't want to ever arrive, to have to face whatever it is that he's going to find. Everything that he is tells him that he needs Leonardo, even though he's too terrified to admit why.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Desmond isn't a man controlled by his urges, but sometimes, he almost wishes he was. He wants to stop thinking and go through with something, anything, anything at all, but he stops and thinks and doesn't move. It's a relief to spend the day in the Animus, where he's safe from even the desire to act on his own instincts, where he can become someone else and pretend he doesn't truly live in a state of suspension, waiting to stop waiting.

When Rebecca pulls him from the Animus, the first thing he hears is Lucy's voice, and it makes him cringe inwardly to realize that he doesn't want to hear her.

"We're done for today," she says, smiling at him, "we've made amazing progress."

"I wouldn't say  _amazing,"_ Shaun says, and Desmond feels something in him leap, or maybe just lurch. When Rebecca tells him they're hoping he won't experience any side effects from the Animus, Desmond's first worry is that he'll start acting like his ancestor. She assures him he's shown none of the warning signs, but the fear refuses to be pushed aside. If he were to start acting like Ezio, there's the chance he'll do something like Ezio did, jumping a ship and following Leonardo because when terror made his knees weak and all coherent thought blur into nothingness it was all that made sense to him. Desmond almost wants to feel as Ezio did; Ezio is only losing Leonardo. Desmond feels as if he has already lost Shaun, as if he never had Shaun at all, not in any way.

Desmond wanders into the kitchen after Rebecca tells him they're finished for the day, finds that someone's used the coffee maker to brew tea. He sits at the table without the coffee he'd wanted, staring out the rain-studded window instead.

"Any new developments in the Animus?" Shaun's voice always seems to be coming from behind him, wherever he isn't looking, as if Shaun is always coming or leaving and never staying.

"Leonardo ditched Florence," Desmond says, tries to keep himself detached from the event that is currently shattering Ezio, the event that, in fact, already has. It's always startling, to live through Ezio's live and return to the present, where everything that was going to happen is already over, that Ezio and Leonardo have both died, have both left behind legacies, and Desmond still doesn't know intertwined they were.

"Any reason why?" Shaun pours himself tea from the coffee maker, and Desmond frowns.

"There's a reason it's a  _coffee_ maker, you know. Do you have to taint it with that stuff?"

"It's tea, Desmond, it won't kill you." Shaun rolls his eyes and makes no move to return the coffee maker to its natural state. "Well?" He waves a hand in a circle in the air, "he left Florence. Why?"

"You just want to know for the database," Desmond scowls, and surprise registers on Shaun's face.

"Why else would anyone care?" he asks, and Desmond forces himself to bite back what he wants to say.  _You could care about them,_ he wants to snap,  _they were real people,_ but it makes no sense, because he's the only one that's living it through.

"I don't know why," he says instead, "haven't found out yet. Ezio followed him to Venice."

"Followed him? Why?"

"Haven't found out yet," Desmond repeats, and he can't tell Shaun anything about how it really was. Can't tell him about Ezio's clenching terror, his full-blown panic and fear.

"Well, why don't you go back in and find out?"

"Because," Desmond glares at him, "didn't you hear Rebecca? Side effects? Dying?"

"She never said dying," Shaun leans back against the kitchen counter, looks clearly exasperated. "No need to be dramatic, Desmond."

"She didn't say dying  _couldn't_ be involved, either, did she?" Desmond retorts, instantly infuriated by the way Shaun shakes his head like Desmond is being ridiculous. "Either way, side effects aren't  _good."_

"That's why they're called side effects," Shaun shoots back, "not benefits. Nomenclature really isn't your strong suit, is it?"

"I don't care what the hell they're called," Desmond snaps, glaring as Shaun turns around and presses a button on the coffee maker, "I just don't want to end up dead after this."

"Yes, we wouldn't want that," Shaun says, so casually it sounds true, and Desmond stares at his back, wide-eyed. "You're rather valuable to us." Desmond pushes his chair back and stands, resists the urge to do anything about the tense energy that has suddenly skyrocketed within him, fists clenched and jaw tight.

"More than you, anyways," he snaps, and slams the kitchen door on the way out. He doesn't look back, scared he'll see that he hurt Shaun somehow, or that he'll see he's done nothing at all but strike out at someone so removed from him that he's throwing energy out into a vast nothingness and all he's doing is losing. He half expects Shaun to come after him, if only to fight with him some more, but Desmond's scared that someday Shaun will figure out that while their arguments don't seem to effect the historian at all, they leave Desmond tense and on edge, so close to being hurt that he hates it. They never fight about anything meaningful, and Shaun never says anything terribly destructive, but all the same, Desmond hates hearing it, hates being almost  _hurt_  by it. Shaun doesn't come after him, and Desmond tells himself he's relieved, but all this does is leave him alone with the shame in wanting to hurt Shaun so badly


	3. Chapter 3

By the time the ship reaches Venezia, Ezio has dragged himself through countless explanations as to why Leonardo might have suddenly disappeared. Each is increasingly worse than the last until, as he stumbles onto the docks, he thinks  _maybe Leonardo left because he hates me._ Every theory has been slowly tearing Ezio apart, but this brings unbidden tears to his eyes, makes something in him seize and clench, something howling within him, collapsing from the agony and despair. He forces himself to stay standing, looks around at the people that push by without seeing him.

He has no idea where Leonardo is. It's only once this strikes him that the full agony of the situation falls on him; Leonardo is gone, and Ezio has stranded himself alone in a foreign city.  _He must be here somewhere,_ he thinks, desperately, starting to walk towards his right if only to attempt to convince himself that he has some sense of where to go.  _It's not fair,_ he thinks for the umpteenth time, shouldering through the crowd of people and scanning faces frantically,  _why didn't he tell me, he tells me everything, what did I do, what happened, why is he doing this to me?_ It seems horribly unlike the sweet-smiled Leonardo to disappear on a rainy morning and leave the city, not unless he had some terribly convincing reason to do so.

Everyone Ezio asks on the street gives him the same answers;  _no, I haven't, no, no, who is Leonardo da Vinci, why are you looking for him, no, no, no, I haven't, I haven't._ All he wants to know is where Leonardo is gone, and every time someone is incapable of telling him, the pressure of panic mounts higher, like if he doesn't find Leonardo soon, he  _never will._

The crowd of people thins out, leaving Ezio standing alone before a white-walled church, the sort that would usually make him wonder idly if he could climb it, had his mind not been frantic with the need to find Leonardo. Distracted as he is, he doesn't notice the woman already climbing until she has shrieked and fallen, the thundering footsteps of guards breaking past his dazed conscience because he has no control over his habitual snap to attention. Ezio supposes it is a miracle that his instinctual senses haven't been taken over too, can only be thankful that instinct is still enough intact that he knows to dart away as the guards continue firing arrows at the thief. There's no thought involved as he runs his dagger through the attacking guard and shoves his hidden blade through the throat of the second guard, nor is there any as he looks to the fallen woman. She leaps to her feet, staggers from the arrow that has pierced her leg, runs to him and falls against him.

"Help, you have to help me," she gasps out, yanking on his arm, "I have to- the river-"  _I can't I can't I can't, I have to find-_ Ezio thinks frantically, but she is pulling him so hard he nearly stumbles, and he gives in, running in her winding wake. They only make it a few streets and survive two attacks from guards before the woman falls, hissing in pain. Ezio stoops to collect her in his arms, and she smiles up at him weakly. "I hear them coming, run," she manages. Her eyes are green, and dark curls escape from under her hat. Ezio can only see blue eyes and blonde curls, all there is in his mind.

"I never caught your name," he says, pushing through the crowd and trying not to imagine that it's Leonardo in his arms, that he's safe and here with him.

"Rosa," she says, voice weaker with every step he takes, "and you?"

"Ezio."

"And what brings you to my rescue, Ezio?" she is starting to struggle for breath, and Ezio breaks into a run. He tries to come up with some explanation for why he is in Venezia that is not the truth, trying not to jostle her as he sprints and ducks around corners, but then he catches sight of a face he swears is the one he's looking for.

 _"Leo-"_ Ezio whips around, but Leonardo is gone, if he was ever there at all, and a voice is screaming, "Rosa! Rosa!" from the river, and Ezio has no choice but to go forwards and not give into the magnetic pull backwards.

Ezio leaves Rosa with her fellow thief Ugo in the gondola, but even though he sprints so hard he has no breath left at all, he doesn't reach the street in time, because Leonardo is already long gone. Ezio wanders aimlessly through the bustling market until he spots a shop filled with paintings.

"Buon giorno!" a man calls from behind the counter, "what can I interest you in?"

"I am looking for an artist," Ezio says, "perhaps you have seen him?"

"I know every artist in Venezia," the man beams, but when Ezio asks, he has never heard of Leonardo da Vinci.

The next two shops Ezio tries are likewise unhelpful, but the third shop owner doesn't immediately reply that he has never heard of Leonardo, and Ezio's broken spirits lift.

"You know him?" he asks, heart beginning to race, and the man nods.

"Si, si. He contacted me before moving to Venezia, for help finding a suitable workshop, some time ago. I believe he arrived not long ago."

"He contacted you a while ago?" Ezio repeats, and the man nods again. "Where is his workshop?" Ezio says, instead of asking why Leonardo had been planning to leave for so long.

Ezio sprints the entire way to Leonardo's workshop, scared that if he stops even for a second, he'll lose all nerve and never find Leonardo at all. The workshop is strikingly similar to the one in Firenze, the same archway and wooden door. When Leonardo opens the door, the unhappy look on his face informs Ezio far too clearly that they are not in Firenze any longer.

"Ezio," Leonardo says, a tone of dull surprise. Ezio draws in a breath, wishes his nerves were steadier.

"You were gone," he says bluntly, because this is has become everything to him since finding the workshop door locked. Leonardo looks down, expression unreadable. "I just wanted to know why," Ezio says, as if this vague curiosity explains why he left the city and came all this way to find Leonardo. "You never told me you were leaving, so I- I was worried and..." he wishes fleetingly that he had thought to plan out his explanation more smoothly, but the reluctant look on Leonardo's face dashes all coherent thought, "did you leave to find- someone? Something?"

"No, Ezio," Leonardo doesn't look at him, and he almost looks injured, like Ezio has somehow hurt him terribly. He goes on, voice growing quieter and quieter, "I left Firenze to- to leave you."

"Oh." Ezio knows now, when something that rushes at him has the power to destroy him. Since becoming an assassin, he has gained the ability to recognize what can hurt him. It's like bracing himself for the blow he knows will leave him gasping and weak, and now he knows how to take it and save the pain for later. He draws in a breath, tries to formulate some response, and finds himself completely unable to do so. "Oh." It doesn't work quite as well as he would have wanted, because the pain hits him all at once, like everything he's ever worried about has been crushed into one, happening all at once. Leonardo is all Ezio has; he was never supposed to leave, because without him- Ezio used to fool himself into thinking that without Leonardo, he would have nothing, but the truth doesn't so much as hurt as completely destroy him. Without Leonardo, he is nothing. The world falls to pieces.

Leonardo turns away and Ezio bolts out of the workshop, blind to the direction and heeding only the wrecking need to escape. He reaches a rooftop several buildings away, heart hammering and tears stinging at his eyes as he climbs into the rooftop garden, shielded by the cloth coverings.

 _I left Firenze,_  Leonardo's voice echoes in his mind,  _to leave you._

It almost feels like a relief to finally know why, even though he knows it's just the final stage of collapse. There's no doubt anymore, no more wondering, because now everything is as sure as if carved in stone. Leonardo left their Firenze to leave Ezio, doesn't want Ezio here in Venezia with him, certainly doesn't love Ezio in any way at all.

There's no more doubt, wondering, or anything that ever resembled hope. Leonardo has taken even that from Ezio. Ezio had never known that Leonardo had so much power, that he would be able to take everything that mattered, to destroy Ezio so completely, to hurt him so deeply that Ezio knows he will never, never recover. All Leonardo had to do was leave. And now, Ezio realizes, the truth finally settling into him, a leaden weight that drowns him, now Leonardo is gone.

Ezio sinks to his knees, face in his hands, and sobs.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Desmond wakes up terrified, and it takes him a while spent staring up at the ceiling and willing his heart to slow to a normal pace before he realizes why. He's had the same dream several times before, that no longer worries him; again and again, he has revisited the tower in Acre, seen Maria's face. This time was different, however. This time, Desmond was himself, and Lucy was waiting for him, turned her face up to meet his kisses and fit into his arms. He woke up thrashing and terrified, and now that the still room is being slowly filled with sunlight, Desmond realizes it is because this is the reality he doesn't want to fall victim to. He's terrified of saying anything, but maybe, Desmond begins to wonder, he's more terrified of saying nothing.

Desmond knows Shaun wakes up early, but is still startled when he finds Shaun in the kitchen at six-thirty. Shaun is drinking coffee and reading a book that doesn't look like his usual textbooks; he's soft and shower-scented, his hair still wet and glasses pushed crooked from his hand as he props his chin in his palm. Desmond stands in the doorway for a moment, before shunting all thoughts from his head and walking into the kitchen. Shaun completely ignores him. This is nothing new, but Desmond still has to steel himself against the slice of pain this ignites in him. He lets irritation wash over him instead, because the coffee maker is still suffering the same identity crisis; it holds only tea.

"What is it with you and screwing up the coffee maker?" Desmond growls, as if this is the worst thing Shaun has ever done to him, or maybe just what he chooses to lash out at the historian for because he can't say _you're always hurting me._

"You should get used to it. Besides, coffee stains your enamel."

"It does what to my what?" Desmond splutters, certain there's an insult to be found somewhere. Shaun shakes his head.

"You're an idiot," he says, making the insult blatant, and the dismissal of subtlety only serves to aggravate Desmond further. "You know, we don't need you until at least eight," Shaun says. Desmond has the strong feeling that Shaun is trying to make him leave. "Where are we in the memory stream, anyways?" Desmond frowns down at the failed coffee maker, unwilling to remember.

"Venice," he finally says. It's easier than explaining any more, and he hopes Shaun won't make him.

"Wow, Desmond, how incredibly helpful. Were you  _doing_  anything in Venice, or were you just standing there for ten hours?"

"Looking for Leonardo," Desmond mutters.

"And? Did you find him?"

"Yeah," Desmond pinches the bridge of his nose between two fingers, exhales slowly before letting go, "moved into a new workshop."

"Why did he do that?" Shaun sounds genuinely curious, but in that fascinated way that doesn't reach beyond the most simple curiosity, certainly not because he cares about Leonardo as a person, or about Ezio.

"He said-" Desmond doesn't meet the inquiring eyes, "he was leaving Florence to leave Ezio."

"Why would he do that?"

"I have no idea."

"You mean Ezio didn't even ask?" Shaun shakes his head at Ezio's seeming uselessness, and something in Desmond breaks.

" _No,_ he didn't ask, he was too busy having an  _emotional breakdown._ Not like you'd care, I guess," Desmond shoots back, and Shaun just rolls his eyes.

"I didn't know an assassin could be so sensitive," he says.  _You don't get it and you never will,_ Desmond thinks, hurt again in that way he never admits aloud,  _you don't care if you hurt me and maybe it's because you don't care about anyone._ He hears footsteps in the hallway, Rebecca's voice and then Lucy's, and this should have served as a warning, but he pays them no heed.

"You don't get it, do you?" Desmond snaps, the sharpness almost, almost stirring up some sort of surprise in Shaun, "It  _killed_ him, Shaun! He's not just some historical character, he had a whole life, and just because no one cared to find out about it doesn't mean it didn't happen and doesn't matter! It's not that he was  _sensitive,_ it was that Leonardo leaving  _really hurt him,_ don't you  _get_ it yet! Just because you're incapable of caring about  _anyone_ doesn't mean that no one else does!"

Everything is dead silent as his echo falls, and Shaun is just looking at Desmond, but for once, Desmond can read the look on his face. This floors him, makes him want to snatch back what he said, fall to his knees and beg forgiveness, but the hurt look on Shaun's face stops him cold.

"You're the one that doesn't get it, Desmond," Shaun says flatly, and he looks like he's going to say something else, but he bites his lip and Desmond feels even worse, "you just don't." His voice breaks and he leaves the room before Desmond can voice the apology that screams through him, pleading and begging and whimpering for forgiveness.

Desmond no longer knows what would hurt worse, being left like Ezio was, or being looked at like Shaun has just looked at him, like he has single-handedly destroyed everything that mattered to Shaun. Desmond doesn't know anymore, but he never wants to find out, because that would mean having to experience it all over again. He never, never wants to again feel the agony that tore Ezio's heart to shreds, or have Shaun look at him like that, with so much pain and hatred on his face.

He waits for the chance to apologize, but Shaun never comes back, and it's the worst confirmation Desmond could have had, that he truly did hurt Shaun so deeply without even knowing it. He wishes he could say he hadn't meant to, but perhaps that's what hurts most of all. Desmond  _meant_  to hurt Shaun, but now that he's succeeded, it feels more like he's hurt himself just as deeply.


	4. Chapter 4

Leonardo wants to give up. No matter what he does, it seems, he fails. Everything he's tried has ended up hurting him, but he'd never thought it could come to this. He has long since comes to terms with being hurt, but for Ezio to suffer as well- there was no question about whether he'd hurt Ezio or not. Leonardo knows Ezio thinks himself stoic and untouchable, but Leonardo also knows this isn't true, not at all. He knows more about the assassin than Ezio would probably like. Knows he hates to cry and never does, except on that day, one that's less than a month from now, when he'll hide from Leonardo and pretend he doesn't miss his brothers and father more than he can bear. It's one of the most horrible days of Ezio's year, but for Leonardo, it's when he feels the closest to Ezio, when he finds Ezio and puts his arms around him and lets him grieve. And now, now he fears he's hurt Ezio just as badly, if not even worse. Leonardo had heard the way Ezio ran, but turned away before he could see just how much he'd hurt the assassin. He couldn't stand to see the proof.

The workshop is silent and still as Leonardo closes the door and leans back against it, looking in and seeing nothing. Leonardo had never thought Ezio would follow him to Venezia. Some traitorous part of him had hoped Ezio would, kept watching the docks as the ship sailed away, before forcing himself to accept the truth. Accept that Ezio had, again, unknowingly broken Leonardo a little more.

But then he'd seen Ezio in Venezia. He'd been carrying a woman through the street, talking to her with gentle words and Leonardo wondered if Ezio had come only to hurt him more.

The situation is, of course, typical, Leonardo thinks bitterly. He fled Firenze when he could no longer bear being near Ezio and now the assassin is here, and everything is the same. Leonardo forces himself not to think about the one difference, not to remember the look he just saw on Ezio's face.

He remembers instead a conversation with Ezio the day before he left- fled, truly- Firenze. Ezio had been courting yet another woman, one who turned him away with the excuse that he frightened her.

"Am I dangerous?" Ezio had asked Leonardo, those impossibly calm amber eyes fixed on him, and Leonardo had taken longer than usually needed to form a response.

"I suppose it depends on who you ask. And what sort of dangerous." This seemed to exasperate Ezio to some degree, for he bit his lip and shook his head.

"Do I scare you?" he'd asked.

Leonardo had hoped Ezio would never ask him that; he couldn't lie, Ezio always knew, and the truth was poisonous, this would hurt them both.  _Yes_ , Leonardo had known he should say,  _your power over me scares me because you don't know you have it. You don't know what you can do. You don't know what you've already done._

"As an assassin? No," Leonardo had answered, truthfully, but Ezio had still looked at him like he knew that wasn't the truth that really hovered in the air between them, threatening and powerful, like he knew Leonardo wanted to confess everything, confess  _you don't know, you don't, all that you've already done, and I just can't take it anymore_.

Now, Leonardo wonders if he should have told Ezio that, if, somehow, that would have made Ezio hurt him less every day. Maybe if Ezio had known what he was capable of, known what he was doing, he would have been different. It's the sort of thought that Leonardo wishes were even a shade true, because Ezio has made it painfully obvious that he's completely incapable of leaving Leonardo's heart intact; he's already pushed Leonardo so far, past the point where he thought the excruciating pain would destroy him from the inside out. Ezio can't seem to stop.

Ezio has never gone a day without hurting Leonardo.

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

"Shaun." Rebecca stands outside the door, knocks again, "Shaun. Please."

"I'm fine." It sounds like a lie, a flimsy one. He's been trying to regain some form of control for the past hour, and it hasn't been working. Desmond's words have finally stopped echoing in his mind, but they've been replaced by others that are worse, so much worse. "Really." Shaun draws in a breath, tries to steady himself.

"Because you always lock me out when you're feeling fine." She taps on the door again, "please, Shaun," she says, like he's doing this voluntarily, as if he has some control over what's happening.

"I'm fine. Besides, the door's open." He hears it open as Rebecca finds this to be true, doesn't look up as her footsteps near. She sits on the bed beside him, but doesn't say anything. "I'm fine," he repeats, uselessly. "I'm okay."

"You are not okay." She leans forward to look over at him, blue-green eyes alight with her deep concern.

"Yes I am."

"You are not."

"Yes I am."

'You're hurt."

"No, I am not."

"Yes, you are."

"No." Tears are starting to sting at his eyes. He takes off his glasses, drops his head into his hands and blinks the tears away.

"You're obviously hurt."

" _No,_  I'm  _not,_ " he hisses, not trusting his voice any further than the whisper because something in him is breaking, again, "I've got _no right to be!"_  he snaps, and the words hover long enough to crush him again. His shoulders slump and he hides his face in his hands again, but Rebecca is silent. Shaun says nothing more, scared of what he'll accidentally confess next, just fights tears.

"Shaun..." she squeezes his shoulder gently, "this isn't about Desmond, is it." She always states her questions, always already knows the answer, every time. He longs for this much certainty in any aspect except that which he already knows for certain. Shaun can be just as sure; he just wishes those irreversible aspects weren't so crushing.

"It could be," he confesses, voice breaking, and Rebecca just hugs him like she already knew.

"It'd be okay," she stresses, but he shakes his head, no stranger to the conversation.

"No. It's never- not again."

"It wasn't your fault. It'd be different."

"It was, that's why it'd be the same. Common factor-" he exhales and tries not to remember any more.

"Desmond is different, Shaun."

"No, he's not."

They hear Lucy's voice, calling Rebecca, and she stands, waits for a moment.

"Desmond's sorry," she says softly, "Michael never did _that_ , did he."

She leaves him then, leaves him with what scares him even more. He hears her voice joining Lucy's in the hallway, and then Desmond, asking something in a low voice, and Lucy telling him they were going back to the Animus, to stop wasting time. Desmond says something else, sounds like a protest, but their footsteps fade, so he must not have gotten what he'd wanted. Shaun doesn't move to join them, doesn't want to meet Rebecca's eyes that so clearly say  _different, Shaun, different,_ and doesn't want to be near Desmond. Rebecca is right.

Desmond isn't the same.

He's just different enough that everything could be even worse.


	5. Chapter 5

Ezio has come to the docks every day for a long, miserable week, waiting to be strong enough to leave, or perhaps just weak enough. He watches a ship's crew scurry around the deck, tries to will himself into moving, shivering as cold wind tears up and down the dock.

"Got a pass?" a man barks at him, and Ezio does, hands it over feeling as if he's giving away something important.

 _This time I'll leave,_  he thinks, leaning on the railing of the ship and watching ropes snap and unwind from their coils on the dock. The ship is only a few yards from the pier when Ezio starts to think about Firenze. It'll be empty without Leonardo. Everything is. In Firenze, there's familiar streets and Leonardo's vacant workshop, all the places he's been and Leonardo's signature on all the best paintings. Ezio still longs to go home, but realizes he can't find it anymore.

"Nice day, isn't it?" the captain walks by him, waving a hand towards the choppy seas; Ezio wonders what conditions he's seen, for this turmoil to seem pleasant.

"I want to go back," Ezio hears himself say, and the captain laughs.

"Changed your mind so soon?"

"Sì." He doesn't want to beg. There's no question that he will, if pushed so far.

"Should have decided sooner, amico."

"There is no way to go back?" Panic is starting to simmer in him, now a familiar feeling. The captain shrugs a shoulder.

"Swim," he suggests, walks away as Ezio glares at his back.

Common sense would have kept him on the ship. Desperation has him diving into the water and swimming back to shore. He's not weak enough, strong enough, to leave.

The water is frigid, and Ezio is shivering hard as he hauls himself onto the dock, ignoring the snickering dockworkers who act as if they've never seen this before when in fact, he knows they have, this is his fourth time getting only as far as the breaking waves.

"Forgot to say goodbye before leaving?" Rosa's voice isn't one he wants to hear, but Ezio turns anyways.

"Something like that." His mind is whimpering  _leave me alone, just go, just go,_  but he ignores this. He's been falling apart for days, maybe already has, and can no longer trust what he feels.

"I've been looking for you. You're a very hard man to find." Her dark eyes shine, and all Ezio sees is that they're not blue.

"I've been- busy." Even though he's been helping the thieves, Ezio has had a painful amount of free time. He spends all of it changing his mind; he makes his way towards Leonardo's workshop, gives up and runs in the other direction, as if he can hide when what he's really trying to escape is himself.

"Clearly," Rosa smiles disarmingly; he fights the urge to bolt. She's everything he knows he should want and doesn't. "Even assassins and thieves deserve to be thanked for rescues."

"It was my pleasure." He knows where this could lead, has done this many times before, and suddenly has the absurd conviction that he can't give in. "You were lucky, you know. I'd only just arrived in Venezia."

"So what brought you here, besides fate?" she smiles again. Ezio misses Leonardo suddenly, with a staggering intensity.

"I came with someone," he explains, improving the truth, "we live here now." It's a lie, a blatant, believable one, but skill at deceit isn't what makes it so believable, it's his desperate desire for the lie to be true.

Ezio bids Rosa a grateful goodbye and leaves her. He is halfway to Leonardo's workshop when he stops. He's never made it as far as the door he knows must be locked because they aren't in Firenze anymore, can never make it that far because he can't stand to risk hearing Leonardo tell him  _I left Firenze to leave you_. Ezio sits on the ledge of a church tower, slow morning silence all around him. If he closes his eyes and ignores the throbbing ache in his chest, he can almost convince himself he's still in their Firenze.

 _I want to go back,_  he thinks, desperate, gazing out at the white-capped waves far out in the water. He wishes this had never happened, but what makes it hurt to a degree dangerously close to fatal is that he can't fix anything. He doesn't know what he did wrong. If only Leonardo could read Ezio as easily as he deciphers Codex pages, he would know that Ezio is sorry, that all he wants is Leonardo back. Without him, there's nothing, but even if Leonardo's absence hadn't destroyed the world, Leonardo would have been all that mattered anyways.

The sun hovers high in the pale sky, off-balanced on its arc. Ezio suddenly misses a morning in Firenze, two years ago, spent atop a church watching sunlight flash off rooftops. If Federico were here now as he was that morning, Ezio doesn't doubt that he'd be in a different disaster, but it would be one he'd be fully aware of, and that would hurt endlessly less.

On that long-past morning, Federico had been sitting beside Ezio, legs splayed, watching the sunlight play across the sky. "I'm surprised you're not helping Mamma with her art collecting," Federico had said, "you spend all your time doing that now, at Leonardo's workshop." Ezio had said nothing, feeling the fringes of something like terror. "You could go more often," Federico had said lightly, "to his workshop. Couldn't you?" Ezio's terror had started to fade away, lurking further away. Federico was asking because he knew, he already knew. "Instead of wasting your time with women."

"I could," Ezio had managed, looking down and feeling embarrassingly exposed.

"You might learn something from him. They say art helps you find yourself." Ezio had said nothing, but Federico had still heard him, the same way Ezio had heard the urging in Federico's warm smile; he knows now, two years later, that given more time, he might have surrendered to the disaster, done what Federico wasn't saying he should do.

 _Tell him, tell him,_  Federico hadn't said, but Ezio had known. He'd pretended he didn't, never told Leonardo at all, but Ezio had known.

 _Why did you leave me?_  he thinks miserably, but doesn't know who he misses more.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Shaun hasn't spoken to Desmond in a week. At first, Desmond this irritated him to no end, but now he's just worried.

"I really think something's wrong," Desmond is sitting next to Lucy as she types, attention riveted on Shaun at his own computer on the other side of the room.

"With?" Lucy matches his nearly inaudible tone, a look on confusion in her blue eyes.

"Shaun still won't talk to me. I must have really screwed up for him not to want to yell at me." Desmond keeps his eyes on Shaun's back, convinced he must be able to hear them, despite the distance between their whispers and him.

"You're right about that," Lucy's fingers hover over the keys as she pauses in her typing, "I know there's something, but it happened before I was here."

"Wait, what?" Desmond would never forgive himself if he'd unwittingly brought up something excruciating.  _That's stupid,_ his mind hisses at him,  _saying something like that, what else was it meant for?_ "Before?"

"Rebecca mentioned something to me once, but I really don't know much." She lifts her head, looks around the room. "Shaun?"

"Lucy!" Desmond hisses, tensing up in horror, but she bats a hand at him to calm him.

"Have you seen Rebecca?" She asks, allowing Desmond to breathe again.

"Kitchen. Taking inventory, she said." He doesn't so much as turn around; there's no sharpness in his voice, none at all, and Desmond feels responsible.

"Oh. Okay." Lucy turns back to Desmond, "Go ask her," she breathes and he nods, casting one more look in Shaun's direction before leaving.

What Rebecca calls "taking inventory" is really just making a shopping list, and when she sees Desmond standing in the doorway, uncharacteristically silent, she seems to sigh.

"Lucy said you could tell me-" he starts, and she nods, cutting him off.

"Yeah, I can. Come with me."

"Why can't you just tell me now?" Desmond frowns, but Rebecca's reluctant look tells him what he doesn't want to know; it's not a good story he's asking to hear, and risking being overheard is like risking disaster.

Rebecca talks about everything but what Desmond wants to hear until they're standing in the produce section, grocery basket in Desmond's hands, and as Rebecca examines the selection of apples, she says, "you can't blame yourself for what happened, you know. You didn't know. No one does, really." It takes Desmond a moment to understand; half a second ago, she was listing all the reasons she hated nail polish. "Which is his fault, really, but that just takes you in circles."

"What happened? Lucy said there was something." Desmond watches her study the apple in her palm before she puts it in a plastic bag and picks up another.

"There was. It wasn't that long ago, maybe two years, two and a half? There was someone."

"Oh."

 _Just because you're incapable of caring about_ _ **anyone**_ _-_ Desmond suddenly feels worse, shocked at the extent of his own cruelty.  _Imagine,_ that terrible part of him snaps,  _if you actually try to hurt him, if this is how horrible it is when you aren't even trying._

"They were great together. They really were," Rebecca says, almost like she's reminiscing, "Shaun never told me just how serious they were, but they were definitely in love. It was obvious."

"What happened?" Desmond asks, because this beautiful beginning never seems to end well anymore. "Did she die?"

"Killed during a mission," Rebecca confirms quietly, meeting his eyes, and the look on her face says she had to witness Shaun's pain. "It was…" she pauses, searching for some way to convey the intangible and the impossible, so she can try to take Desmond back to the only day she ever saw Shaun cry and the last day she saw him really alive.

"I understand," Desmond says, but some part of him really hopes he never will, because understanding is like feeling that sort of pain for himself. He's already had to become Ezio while the deepest kind of hurt tore him to pieces; Desmond knows that understanding Shaun's pain will hurt more, but he doesn't want to get so close as to even discover why this is so terribly true.

Desmond spends most of the day trying to word an apology he can't even begin to express. It's evening before he gives up on ever finding the right words; it's impossible to say what he refuses to admit aloud.

"Shaun." Desmond stays in the doorway, looking into the room; Shaun is sitting in one of the armchairs, laptop on his knees, and when he looks at Desmond, there's painful reluctance on his face. "Rebecca told me about- you, and losing- I didn't know, I never should have-" Desmond stumbles around trying to explain, plunges on instead, "I'm sorry." He'd been hoping for Shaun to say something to explain more, something, anything, but Shaun's quiet for a few more heartbeats.

"His name was Michael," Shaun says. It's nothing, not significant at all, but it holds all the importance of _everything._ Desmond can't speak, can't get past the fact that Shaun has told him something. "He would come back late after being sent out and he never could seem to get into bed without waking me up," Shaun says absently, taking off his glasses and rubs his eyes with his hand, "But I didn't mind." He turns back to the laptop, replacing his glasses and starting to type again.

"He was an assassin, huh?" Desmond says, and Shaun nods slowly, questioning look on his face. "Seems to be a pattern, doesn't it?" Desmond shrugs a shoulder, "assassins falling in love with geniuses." He leaves before Shaun can ask him to clarify, before he can be fool enough to take back the only thing he's ever said that's even halfway to confessing.


	6. Chapter 6

The sunrises in Leonardo's paintings are far more beautiful than the one Ezio sees from the ship. Leonardo once told Ezio that he always paints sunrises, not sunsets, because they're beginnings and not endings, and Leonardo loves beginnings and all that they bring. But here, on the wrong side of the sea, the light is cold and pale, dull against the choppy water; what's truly wrong is that the sun rises now over Firenze, where Leo is not. Ezio could never go there, not now. Instead, Monteriggioni offers the same security, less pain. It still feels like giving up.

Ezio arrives at the villa in the afternoon, chased by the golden light of the falling sun. He avoids the main entrance, veering off instead around the side. When he hears singing, his mother's lullaby, he wonders if he's lost all the reality he's managed to keep his hold on. At the sound of his footsteps, however, the singing stops, and Claudia appears from behind the trailing vines of climbing roses.

"Ezio!" She beams, running and throwing her arms around him, "I've missed you!"

"I've missed you too, Claudia," he hugs her tight, can't avoid thinking about how she's the only sibling he has now, how protecting her is all that matters in the family. Seeing her here, safe and happy, it lightens the horrible darkness that's hunting him, catching him again and again.

He sits on the low wall to watch her tend the roses, her singing again weaving through the leaves between them. Ezio always thinks Leonardo would like his artistic, musical baby sister, that they'd get along so well. He's never enabled this to happen; guilt swells in his chest when he can't even consider the idea. Leonardo is too old for her, he thinks, though the artist is barely older than Ezio himself, and their father is ten years older than their mother. Leonardo's too much of a daydreamer to be a dedicated lover, Ezio tells himself, but Leonardo is also compassionate and attuned to people around him. Leonardo is too flawless, but doesn't Claudia deserve perfection? Shouldn't her brother be the last person in the world to keep it from her, to keep it to himself?

"Ezio, I was thinking," Claudia says, "about Leonardo–" Ezio's breath hitches and he can manage no words, "why have you never brought him home with you? To see us here?"

"Why would I?" he asks carefully, fingers crossed behind his back and praying she won't realize what he's kept her from.

"Well, when Federico fell in love with Emiliana, he brought her home. Remember?"

Ezio remembers Emiliana, bright-eyed with an elfish face and long auburn curls, who died of Scarlet Fever not long after losing Federico, which had happened so soon after they'd met.

"I thought you would do the same."

"I don't understand the connection, Claudia," Ezio says, heart starting to race – it's just like with Federico, two years ago.

"Oh, Ezio," she sighs, and he's never heard her like this, like their mother. There's a knowing note to her voice, the way she tilts her head and looks at him with eyes of sympathy. The deaths made Claudia grow up, far too fast, but now it seems she's truly matured. Ezio wishes Federico could see their baby sister now.

"This is different," Ezio claims, "Emiliana loved Federico, he loved her back." Those last few months, Federico had been radiantly happy, lit up in a way Ezio had never seen before. Ezio doesn't feel that way. He's been strung along and shattered, broken down and then abandoned, ruined.

"Does Leonardo know you love him?" Claudia asks, doesn't ask whether Ezio does or not. Federico never asked, but he knew, and somehow Claudia does too. Ezio wonders if it's obvious, if Leonardo knows. If he did know – "have you told him?" Ezio shakes his head no. He's told Leonardo everything, anything but this.

_Leonardo, I killed someone today, I feel so guilty._

_Leonardo, I wish I was as smart as you._

_Leonardo, I'm terrible at art, how do you do it so beautifully?_

_Leonardo, your workshop is the best hiding place in the whole city._

_Leonardo, I think you'd like this church I found, it's very nice._

_Leonardo, I miss Federico._

_Leonardo, what if I lose Claudia next?_

_Leonardo, what if I lose you?_

And Leonardo had told Ezio everything too, but never exactly what Ezio wanted to hear, though he waited, clung to every word and waited.

_Ezio, you had to kill him, you had no choice, it doesn't make you a bad person._

_Ezio, you are, in a different way than I am._

_Ezio, the same way you can solve anything and overcome anything._

_Ezio, you're always welcome here._

_Ezio, I'd love to see it._

_Ezio, he'd be so proud of you._

_Ezio, you won't, you'll keep her safe._

_Ezio, you never will._

He's never told Leonardo what every sentence seemed to tempt him into continuing on to say.

_Leonardo, I love you._

Ezio doesn't know what Leonardo would say.

"You never did, did you, Ezio?" Claudia says. Ezio shakes his head no. "Why are you here?"

"Leonardo is in Venezia," Ezio stares down at the ground, "he left Firenze to leave me."

"Ezio, remember when you told me Duche wasn't worth my time?"

"Yes." Something terrible starts to twist and tear within him, threatening to burn him and leave him nothing.

"How did you know?"

"I just did. I could see it." He doesn't ever want to hear what must be coming, doesn't want to know.

"Leonardo is not like that." Her words strike Ezio speechless, drawn between whether this is reassuring or devastating in the worse way, to know exactly what he's lost. Claudia leans around the roses, "Federico knew they were going to die," she says suddenly, "he told me. When they caught Papà, and were looking for him, he was with me. He went out to them so they wouldn't come in and find me," she says quietly, "he said he didn't know if you'd get caught too. He told me you're in love with Leonardo, that he hoped you'd stop torturing yourself by saying nothing."

"He told you that? He was going to get caught, and that's what was important?" He's caught between disbelief and the aching longing to have Federico with them again, with all his smirking cunning and casual way of being fiercely loyal and affectionate.

"He knew it was all he'd get to say to any of us," Claudia says, blinking away tears, "he told me I was his favorite sister, remember how he always used to say that?"

"Even if we had more, Claudia, you'd always be the best," Ezio says, and Claudia giggles, almost sadly.

"Only you say that, Ezio," she smiles at him, "you always think about things more than he did. He told me what to tell Mamma, Emiliana – oh, I miss her too… what do you think she'd do, if she hadn't died of the fever?"

"I don't know," Ezio shakes his head, "she really loved Federico. It would have been horrible for her, living on without him."  _Like we are,_ he knows they are both thinking,  _she was the lucky one, to escape this._

"He told me what to tell Petuccico… Federico didn't think they'd take him too…" she shakes her head, as if chasing away the memories, "that's what he said for you, Ezio. That he loved you, that he wanted you to be happy."

"You never told me."

"You're always gone," Claudia says quietly, dark eyes downcast, "I know you have to be, but I still miss you." Then she plants her hands on her hips, fixes him with a look that makes him think of their mother. "Now leave."

"Oh, Claudia, you wound me so!" he claps his hands over his heart, leaning back on the wall nearly to the point of falling off. Claudia tries to button up her giggles.

"I want you to go, I really do!" Her expression sobers slightly, "honest, Ezio, if you love him, tell him."

"He's not going to care," Ezio's momentarily sunny mood darkens back to what has become normal, deeply dark. "He left Firenze to leave me."

"Ezio, you honestly think Leonardo would just leave to get away from you without having a  _really_ good reason? He sounds like someone who thinks a lot about things," Claudia says, "I think he must have a reason."

"I know he has a reason," Ezio looks down at his hands, "I don't want to know it."

"Go talk to him," Claudia demands, and Ezio half smiles at the tone, and wishes more than ever that Federico could know her now.

Ezio knows that leaving less than an hour after arriving sounds ridiculous; it feels less ridiculous, however, than diving off a ship that's barely left the docks. As he watches Monteriggioni fade into the sinking light of the afternoon, disappearing with the sun, Ezio knows, hauntingly, what this signifies; he will do anything for Leonardo.

The workshop door opens the moment Ezio hears Leonardo's footsteps, so it couldn't have been locked, and Ezio is still thinking about this when Leonardo opens the door and looks questioningly at him.

"Leonardo, I – I want to talk to you," Ezio says, feels absurdly hopeful, so much that he knows it'll hurt when Leonardo tells him the truth once again. He never was able to read Leonardo's deep blue eyes, has no idea what the artist is thinking.

"If you wish," he says, stepping back to let Ezio in. He goes back to his painting, but Ezio can still feel Leonardo's gaze on him as he wanders through the workshop. He pauses before a painting, a sun hovering high over water.

"This is new," he says, looking over his shoulder at Leonardo. Leonardo nods, twisting a paintbrush between his fingers.

"Sì, part of a series, my favorite one. Another customer wanted a set of their own," Leonardo says, a smile ghosting over his face, "this is the last," he gestures to the one before him. A sunrise sprawls across the canvas, a rosy sunrise over the city. "I always do the sunrise one last," Leonardo says distantly, looking at it like he sees something Ezio doesn't.

"I know," Ezio says softly, looking at Leonardo instead of the painting. He spends the day watching Leonardo paint, promising himself again and again that he'll tell Leonardo soon, so soon, but sunset comes and goes, and Ezio is still silent.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Desmond is sprawled on the couch, counting raindrops on the window panes. "I've had nine girlfriends," he says to the quietness around him. Shaun pauses in his typing for a moment and Desmond feels absurdly happy to have a portion of his attention.

"I haven't dated that many people," Shaun says, and then the typing starts up again, a counterpoint to the pounding rain.

"I've dated eleven."

"Tell me, Desmond, how goes remedial algebra? Addition giving you a hard time?" His tone is a little less sharp, more frosted over humor, but Desmond is wildly grateful for what he sees as progress. It's taken a week, a very slow week, but he can almost see something like friendliness through all the ice.

"The last two weren't girlfriends, idiot," Desmond grins, though, "Jason – we just didn't get along – and Andy – he went back to girls – were the last two." He braces himself for the inevitable,  _you were so bad you turned him off the entire gender?,_ but it never comes.

"He sounds like a waste of time, then," Shaun says instead, and Desmond is almost certain that despite all the distance, it's sympathy.

Sometimes, Desmond wonders if some ancestor will revisit his memories, what they'll deem important enough to relive. He wonders if they'll meet Natalie, the last girlfriend, who was sweet and bright and informed him that gay boys weren't supposed to date girls. He wonders if they'll meet Jason, blonde and gray-eyed, who never ceased to drive Desmond crazy with his stubbornness and inability to be flexible and steadfast insistence on being right, but who made Desmond laugh so much it made Desmond love him. He wonders if they'll meet Andy, with his dark curls and baby face, if they'd know the devilish way he smiled, if they'd feel Desmond's crushing envy of whatever girl was lucky enough to taste his kiss now.

He knows they'll meet Shaun. To skip his memory would be like pretending Ezio never met Leonardo, like examining before and after and finding them jarringly different and not knowing why. Desmond worries, though. He worries something will happen, that they'll be separated as easily as they met, and that this memory now won't matter anymore, to the observer.

"I still don't know which side of a breakup is worse," Desmond says, and Shaun looks over at him, a raw hope on his face that he almost instantly hides.

"Guess it depends," Shaun says, voice drifting.

"Yeah. Andy broke up with me, but I broke up with Jason, and I felt bad about it, because sometimes I really loved him. It was almost worse, having control over it and making that happen." He doesn't expect Shaun to say anything, he felt the shift into the more personal topic, and Shaun is turning off his computer.

"I'd rather not be the one to do it," Shaun says, standing, "I was the one who ended it, with Michael."

"You- what?" Desmond stares at him, but Shaun has turned away, collecting his papers. "I thought you loved him. Didn't you?"

"I did," Shaun confirms, "it wasn't because I didn't love him." Desmond doesn't ask anything more. He's already had to face some of the worst things in the world. He doesn't want to know what could make someone separate himself from his lover, leave still loving him. Desmond doesn't know what could be so terrible in its power to destroy. 


	7. Chapter 7

Leonardo's workshop is half-lit with sunlight that makes it feel like they're still in Firenze, and Ezio would almost be fooled into thinking they truly are, but for the way Leonardo is quiet and a little distant, like he's not entirely sure he wants Ezio here at all. Ezio is sitting at the table in the center of the room, watching Leonardo spend more time staring at the canvas before him than painting on it, thoughtful and seeing things Ezio never will. This, at least, is just like Leonardo used to be, before that unnamed, unmentioned  _something_ happened that Ezio still hasn't found the courage to ask after. Ezio still wonders what Leonardo can see on blank canvases. He's always loved watching this process, the way Leonardo is so absorbed in his art, makes the act of creating beauty from his mind and his hands seem so effortless, as if this is what he is designed for. Ezio has no doubt about this; Leonardo is meant for art and imagination and creation. Ezio is always half tempted to ask Leonardo if he can sense that, too, but he fears that if Leonardo doesn't, telling him will ruin something ineffable.

Ezio has missed this. Having Leonardo back, even to this small extent, makes him ache with gratitude, even as it fills him with fear. He cannot live without this; even in the short time he suffered through without Leonardo, he could feel that he was losing more than himself. Now that they've finally reached some shaky compromise, a bridge built on feathers instead of lead, Ezio cannot bear to risk destroying anything again. The prospect of losing Leonardo is shattering; Ezio feels ruined enough. Telling Leonardo and receiving some look of pitying rejection- this would destroy all that he has managed to keep his hold on.

"It's too blue..." Leonardo sighs, frowning at the canvas. Ezio can see only greens on the canvas; maybe Leonardo sees the finished product in his mind, but Ezio thinks that Leonardo must somehow see more than that. He sees instructions in the nonsensical lines of the Codex pages, must see something Ezio cannot even imagine on the canvas. Leonardo starts rifling through a set of paintbrushes instead, never so much as looking at the paint on the table behind him. There's a knock on the door, but Leonardo barely looks up. "Come in," he calls, examining two paint brushes.

"Rosa," Ezio feels less dread than he usually does; he feels almost safe, being here with Leonardo, and surely she cannot take him away from Leonardo when he is already here.

"As I've said before, you're a very hard man to find," she smiles. Ezio watches Leonardo frown and brush another shade of green onto the canvas. "Antonio wants to thank you for all your help, he's also out looking for you."

"It was my pleasure," Ezio's gaze darts to Leonardo, but the artist has his back to them. "I look forward to working with the thieves again."

"So you are staying in Venezia?" Rosa asks, a distinct brightness to her voice, "with-"

"I am staying," Ezio cuts in, and she nods.

"Then we will be seeing you again." She looks around the workshop, and Ezio sees her gaze fall on the set of paintings Leonardo has finished for a customer, the three stages of the sun. "These are beautiful, Signore Da Vinci," she says, and he looks over his shoulder.

"Grazie." He says this without the flow and grace of when he says it to Ezio.

"Could I ask you to paint these for me?" Rosa asks hopefully, but Leonardo shakes his head no.

"I'm sorry, Signorina. I'm terribly busy with orders right now, and must ask forgiveness. I couldn't possibly."

Once Rosa has gone, Leonardo returns to his painting as if nothing has happened, either missing or ignoring Ezio's incredulous gaze.

"You have only the one order right now," Ezio finally says, when Leonardo makes it clear that he doesn't intend on addressing the subject.

"Si."

"You told Rosa you're busy," Ezio explains, exasperated at Leonardo's uncharacteristic contrariness, "what did you mean by that, then?"

"I meant nothing," Leonardo shrugs a shoulder, fixes blue eyes on Ezio and again, Ezio can read nothing on his face that might help in understanding his thoughts.

"But - it makes no sense," Ezio protests again, confusion welling up as he considers it further.

"So? You're allowed to be unfathomable, and I am not?" the sharpness of this stuns Ezio, already speechless by the obvious anger in those blue eyes, usually so unreadable. "Maybe I just didn't want to. It is not extraordinary." Leonardo never snaps at him; Ezio aches to ask him what is so wrong, but he fears hearing the same answer as before, fears hearing something worse, fears hearing nothing at all. Leonardo has never denied Ezio anything, and certainly never answers - Ezio has come to Leonardo asking to fly, and Leonardo did not even refuse him that. Long before that day, it had become fact in Ezio's mind: Leonardo can do anything, solve anything, create anything. It never occurred to Ezio that Leonardo might want nothing more than to have a life away from the assassin, a life where he could work in peace and where Ezio's troubles wouldn't throw barriers before all his brilliance. Maybe Ezio is holding him back.

Ezio puts his head down on his folded arms atop the table, hears Leonardo's footsteps fade into another room. He hasn't been able to sleep peacefully since the day he found Leonardo gone, still can't, because something of Leonardo is still gone. He dreams he's still in Leonardo's workshop, at the same table where he sleeps now. The door opens, and someone walks across the workshop, stops next to him.

"Ezio," the voice turns his blood to shock itself, coursing through him, and when he looks up, Federico is standing there.

"You're back," he breathes, feeling tears well in his eyes and the blush this evokes, but he can't hide his relief, the gratitude he wishes he could express to fate; the broken world has been pieced back together, everything that was horribly wrong is righted, the hurt is starting to fade away. He feels almost whole again. "Don't ever leave again, don't, we missed you- please, Federico, just- promise, please, don't ever leave me again," he pleads in a whisper, eyes fixed on his brother. Federico puts a hand on his shoulder, smiles.

"I told Claudia to give you a message," he says, that deep voice of his that Ezio envied so much as a younger child, "when the time was right. As well as to Mamma, and Emiliana-"

"She's-" Ezio looks away, pained, "Emiliana, I'm so sorry- she had scarlet fever, and she-"

"She's dead," Federico says, but he doesn't fall to pieces the way Ezio knows he would if- "I'll see her again," Federico says, a sureness to his words Ezio longs to have for himself, "very soon."

"You can't leave us again," Ezio protests, but Federico shakes his head.

"Did Claudia tell you?" he asks, "have you told Leonardo?"

"I can't," Ezio whispers, shame bringing a crimson blush to his face, "I can't, Federico, don't you understand? He'll hate me. I can't lose him, I can't, I already have and I can't stand it- he's everything to me, don't you see?"

"Don't you love him?" Federico asks calmly.

" _Yes!_ " Ezio drops his head into his hands, shoulders shaking, "I can't, I can't, I can't, I'm not supposed to love him, can't you see? He doesn't love me, he'll never speak to me again. I can't take living without him!"

"He's ruining you," Federico says sadly, and Ezio just looks at him with hurt eyes. "He already has."

"I couldn't help it. Couldn't stop it."

"You're trying to," Federico says, "that's what's ruining you. You are."

"Make it stop," Ezio whimpers, beseeching, "God, Federico, please, please, this- this hurts-"

"Just tell him. My baby brother's never been short of courage before," Federico says, that sureness again in his voice, and it breaks Ezio's heart to know he's failed Federico as well as himself. "Tell Leonardo."

"Are you leaving?" Ezio asks when Federico walks to the door. He looks back at Ezio, who understands suddenly what he's not saying.

"Don't leave!" Ezio gasps, panic running rampant through him, "No, Federico, no,  _please!"_  Federico closes the door behind him, and Ezio collapses into silent sobs, everything broken again.

"Ezio?" Leonardo has come to Federico's place beside Ezio, his blue eyes sympathetic, worried, "do you want to tell me something?"

Ezio wakes with a choked gasp, jerking away from the table and nearly falling. At this sudden burst of movement, Leonardo comes in from the other room, that quizzical look on his face, the one Ezio loves. "Ezio?" he says, the same way he just said, in the alternate universe of Ezio's dreams. Ezio draws in a breath, but something in him flees, cowers.

"Why did you leave Firenze?" he asks instead, and maybe Leonardo can tell that something in him has broken, pleading for an explanation, because he doesn't answer immediately.

"Why did  _you?_ " Leonardo asks, but Ezio has no answer he can give that won't destroy the pitiful everything he has left to cling to.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Sometimes Desmond wonders if bluntness is good or bad. He wonders this about everything now, about having to kill and risking so much, about suffering through his ancestor's pain so vividly that it starts to change his mind about his present actions, and keeping secrets. He's seeing, more and more, that all there are in the world are blurred lines and indistinctness. He's spent the past two days debating how to ask Shaun more about Michael, debating even whether he wants to know. That, he's found, has already been answered, for a long time. Shaun's past formed so much of who he is now. Desmond has long since realized that he can never truly know Shaun without knowing that; Shaun has said nothing because Desmond has not asked the right questions, and the right questions come only from the honesty he's refused even to himself.

"Hey," Desmond leans around the doorway into Shaun's room. It's far neater than Desmond's own room, though papers are strewn about. He's half disappointed that Shaun is still awake; he waited until past midnight, drawing it out in hopes that Shaun would go to sleep and Desmond could push this off another day. "Could I talk to you for a second?" He inwardly cringes at the indirectness that is already showing through. He doesn't want to talk for a second, he wants Shaun's attention long enough to explain. Shaun is sitting up in bed, back against the headboard, and he looks up from his laptop to nod to Desmond. Desmond comes to sit on the edge of the bed near him, still turning words over and around in his mind. He spends the next minute in silence, unable to get a grasp on any of the words spinning through his thoughts in unidentifiable whirls.

"Don't you want to say anything?" Shaun asks, but there's a gentleness to his urging that Desmond's never heard before. "That's what usually happens, you know. When you talk to people about things." Desmond knows full well he's imagining it, but he swears it sounds like Shaun is encouraging him, almost assuring him that he won't regret it. He meets Shaun's eyes, and when he doesn't immediately see a refusal, doesn't give himself time to give up again.

"I love you," he blurts out, fast as if this can ease the blow. Shaun doesn't say anything. Desmond draws in a breath, looks away, "it'd be great if you could-" Shaun suddenly pulls him close, crushes his lips against Desmond's, and the entire world swings into another axis, one that feels ineffably more right, where Desmond's breathing hitches and his hand curls into Shaun's shirt, tugging him closer, where they breathe the same breath and nothing's a question anymore.

"Do that?" Shaun says when they part, and Desmond nods, smiling and feeling ridiculously happy.

"I've been meaning to ask you if you'd do that," he manages, and Shaun laughs.

"What made you decide to?"

"I don't know. But don't ever stop. Okay?"

"Okay," Shaun answers, with all the solemn sureness of an  _I do,_ "so long as you don't leave, I won't stop."

"Okay. Good." Desmond reaches over, pushes the laptop closed and turns off the light on the bedside table. "I'm staying. I put this off later than I meant to," he says, making Shaun laugh.

"Like I'd let you leave, idiot," he pulls Desmond down beside him, curls into his side. They're both quiet in the dark for a while; Desmond can't sleep, heart still racing with the pulsing awareness that Shaun is _here,_ that Shaun is  _his,_ that he is  _Shaun's,_ that suddenly everything's fallen into place. Shaun moves beside him, slings an arm across him.

"I broke up with him because I couldn't stand always being scared I was going to lose him," Shaun says suddenly, "and I was scared that I'd get too attached and then find something about him I couldn't love. I left him because I was a coward. He died loving me, and he was alone."

Shaun's never told him anything of substance before; it means more than the  _I love you_ he's confessed, more than anything, and Desmond realizes it's too late, far too late, to ever go on without taking on his pain too.

There's still something he's never considered, though, as he slips an arm around Shaun and kisses him tentatively, kisses that still feel so new and careful, feel like he's tasting the rest of his life, can't get enough. He can take on Shaun's pain if Shaun will accept his, can ease Shaun's if he'll be there for Desmond in turn.

"So how am I different?" Desmond whispers.

"Isn't it obvious?" Shaun sounds more like himself, even as he stays warm against Desmond's side; this, Desmond is surprised to find, feels real. "You drive me insane. I already know that."

"You're such a romantic."

"You haven't heard the romantic part yet, idiot."

"Oh, so there  _is_ a romantic part. And here I was swooning over the fact that I've managed to drive you crazy." Desmond grins in the darkness.

"Heaven save me from the idiots. Don't tell me you're a secret romance novelist, and that this will be your next great plot?"

"And if I am?" Desmond counters.

"I'm not buying your books."

"That hurt my feelings."

"And your ego, I expect."

"You gonna tell me why I'm different yet?" Desmond asks again.

"You haven't gotten it yet? You drive me crazy. And I don't care. I don't get it, I expect I never will, but I'm in love with you. That's why you're different."

"So you're not scared to find something wrong with me," Desmond says.

"There's a lot that's wrong with you."

"Thanks."

"Hasn't stopped me loving you." He can hear Shaun's smile.

"But- the other part," Desmond says.  _Promise you won't leave me because you don't want to lose me._

"I know."

"You won't lose me," Desmond promises, as if this is possible to promise, even though he will do everything in his power to prevent it from befalling them.

"If you get yourself killed, I'll never forgive you."

"Yeah, you will."

"I suppose I will. But don't test it. Okay?"

"Okay." Desmond closes his eyes, feels the darkness envelope them gently, alarm clock still glowing towards three AM. "Want to know what made me decide to tell you?"

"Yeah."

"In the Animus. Ezio's in love with Leonardo and won't tell him, and it's killing him."

"You love me that much?"

"Yeah," Desmond says, wants to convey so much more, but something tells him that Shaun knows anyways, even if he can't say it.  _I'll die loving you._ This feels the same, loving Shaun, just like Ezio loves Leonardo. It feels just as defining, like knowing what changed him before it does so, like knowing exactly who he was designed to fit with.

"Do you worry they didn't end up together?" Shaun asks.

"No," Desmond lies, feels ridiculous that he does, that he has Ezio's nightmares, that even though the world has forgotten all but their feats, forgotten their faces and forgotten their passions, he is still tangled with fear that they died apart.

"Me too," Shaun says softly, hearing all the everything Desmond said, concealed in his answer that would have meant nothing if he hadn't been listening.


	8. Chapter 8

Ezio wakes up early in the morning, jolted from sleep by a loud noise. He tenses, waits to hear it again. The workshop is silent for a moment more, and then he hears it again, this time followed by footsteps, on the roof. Within a heartbeat he's racing for the door, heaving himself up to the roof in a matter of moments. He pauses, clinging just below the roof, and catches a toehold so he can lean up to see. It's Leonardo. He's setting up an easel, silhouetted against the barely visible sun. Ezio sighs, pulls himself up onto the rooftop.

"Leo, you scared me half to death. What're you doing up here?"

"What does it look like?" Leonardo says absently, watching the sun. "The sky is so foggy here in the mornings," he remarks sadly, shaking his head. Ezio comes to look over Leonardo's shoulder at the empty canvas. "It's never like this in Firenze."

"So why did you leave?" Ezio asks quietly, reddening with embarrassment at the desperation that breaks open in his voice, although he can't help it. He has to know, to hear from Leonardo why he was singularly responsible for all that has gone wrong, all that is still wrong.

"Ezio," Leonardo sighs, "I will tell you only when you tell me why  _you_ left."

"I'll tell you that when you tell me why you said you despise women," Ezio snaps, because he could see, so easily, that Leonardo truly doesn't want to, "then, I'd tell you. So? Will you tell me that?"

"Ezio, please," Leonardo turns beseeching eyes to him, "don't make me," he pleads, and it breaks what's left of Ezio's heart, of which there's only enough left to hurt him even more. Forcing Leonardo to tell him suddenly feels so cruel, so heartless, and Ezio recoils at the helpless look on Leonardo's face.

"I won't," he promises softly, "I won't, I just want to know why I made you leave Firenze. That's all I want, I'm sorry, I want to fix it. That's all."

"You can't," Leonardo says, and Ezio has never heard him like this before, so convinced that hope is nowhere at all, "That's why I won't tell you. This- you can't fix this." He looks as hurt as Ezio has been feeling, since the day this man he loves ruined him, abandoned him. Ezio wonders suddenly, terribly, how badly he's hurt Leonardo, never meaning to but doing so anyways.

"I would never try to hurt you," he says, because suddenly it seems like the world is staked on this, because Leonardo thinks Ezio could hurt him and live with himself. It means everything, to make sure Leonardo knows Ezio would never mean to hurt him, that he means everything to Ezio, that he knows Ezio loves him. Ezio can't put his fear ahead of this, not even his fear of losing Leonardo, because it's so much more important to keep Leonardo from hurting, to never, never hurt him.

"I never meant to hurt you," Ezio says, never more scared than he is now, "did I?"

"I don't know," Leonardo mumbles, doesn't look at him, just watches the sunrise that isn't happening. His shoulders slump, as he realizes Ezio is still watching him, waiting, "maybe. Yes."

"I didn't mean to," Ezio pleads, "I didn't, don't you believe that?" Leonardo doesn't look at him; he may as well have told Ezio he believes it was whole-heartedly intentional, that he feels as hurt as if Ezio had set out to destroy him.

"I know you didn't mean to," Leonardo says carefully, and Ezio hears what he isn't saying:  _you still hurt me, it doesn't feel any different that you didn't mean to._ "But-" his blue eyes well with tears and he turns away, but Ezio's already seen. Ezio stops thinking, he pulls Leonardo into his arms and holds him tight. "But that's why I left. Why did you?"

"Leonardo, I left because I love you," Ezio says, and it feels like he's forcing the words from his lips, like everything in him is screaming to have them back, because their silence is what's holding him together. "That's why I left, because I love you, and you left." It feels like he's breaking, so ruined, and Leonardo turns his face into Ezio's neck, holding onto him so tight Ezio almost believes he'll never leaves.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, "Oh, Ezio, I'm so sorry..."

"You don't-" The world is falling apart now, there's nothing, just the burning and the breaking. Ezio knows that the sun is rising over Venezia, but it doesn't feel like it, doesn't feel like it ever could, not ever again.

"I didn't know. I wouldn't have left if I'd known," Leonardo draws in a trembling breath, looks away, "I left because being near you hurt, because I love you."

When he kisses Ezio, it's like the world is realigning, shifting into the degree the universe missed. Ezio has never felt as whole as he does in this moment, like nothing could ever be wrong again, that he's found where he's meant to be, and now he knows he'll never have to leave. Everything feels like it always should have been this way, with the sureness that it always will stay just like this, so neither of them will have to suffer without ever again.

Dusk in Venezia is like Firenze's dawn. The sinking sun began the night, and moonlight pours into the room like water. Ezio watches the silver light shift as clouds unveil the moon, trailing shadows across the bedroom floor. Beside him, Leonardo is warm and fit against him, curled in his embrace. He smiles as Ezio strokes a hand through his curls, kisses him gently.

"I missed you," Leonardo whispers, like the night would break anything louder, "I don't want to be away from you again." he traces his fingers over Ezio's chest, touch like a whisper, "I hated it."

"I hated it too," Ezio says softly, "I'm still curious why you hate women," he can't resist asking, and Leonardo blushes scarlet.

"You lavished your attention on them. They had you, always, like I never could. I was jealous of anyone who you seemed to love, and it was every woman that walked in the door. They always had your attention."

"You always did. Just you, caro mio,"  _Always will,_ he thinks, and Leonardo smiles, because he knows.

In the morning, Ezio wakes up to find Leonardo gone, but hears his voice from the workshop downstairs. Ezio pauses to pull on a shirt over his pants, leaves his armor in a heap of white fabric, metal and leather on the floor, before tripping down the stairs, following the sound of Leonardo's voice.

"No, Signore, I have not seen anyone like that," Leonardo is saying to someone outside workshop through the half-open door, "I'm very certain."

"Many people have said they've seen him around here," another, rougher, voice comes from outside, "surely you wouldn't mind if we take a look. Just to be sure."

"He is not here, I assure you," Leonardo steps back as the guard shoulders his way past. The man's gaze sweeps across the room, lands on Ezio in the doorway.

"Who might you be?" the guard asks, examining Ezio's face like he's comparing it to the posters hung around Venezia, warning citizens against the assassin that haunts their streets.

"My assistant," Leonardo cuts in, even as Ezio starts calculating escape routes and excuses to convince the guard Leonardo doesn't know him. "And messenger, really. Although I suppose you could also call him an apprentice-"

"Name?" the guard barks.

"Salai," Leonardo says quickly, "now, would you be so kind as to let us return to work? Surely you can tell we're not hiding an assassin here." Ezio tries to look anything but guilty when the guard looks at him again.

"If you see him," the guard stalks back out the doorway, "tell us, or we'll assume you're an accomplice."

"Signore, if I do, I will most certainly come tell you," Leonardo says, sounding so convincing that Ezio has to remind himself Leonardo is lying. He closes the door behind the guard, turns to look at Ezio. "Amore mio, your timing is perfectly inconvenient," he says, smiling.

"Salai?" Ezio grins as well, "surely you could have made up a better name for me? Now everyone that comes in here will think that's who I am."

"It was the first thing I could think of! I was studying Latin this morning, and  _salire_ means 'to jump,' and that's the last word I'd read, so-" he shrugs, blushes a little, "it is better than being taken to jail, is it not?"

"Endlessly better," Ezio crosses the room and kisses him, covering him like the sunlight over Venezia, "I'd be anything to be yours."

"To me, you'll stay just the way you are," Leonardo says softly. Ezio never had to tell him,  _you're the only one who'll let me,_ Leonardo already knew. Last night, Ezio had said  _you changed everything for me, I never want to lose you,_ and Leonardo had cried, because he'd always wanted to do something important, and that was more than important to him, that meant the whole world.

Once, Ezio was constantly surprised, that Leonardo already knew things he'd never said, but now that he knew what Leonardo felt without having to ask, it seemed less surprising, but no less amazing.

Even though Leonardo knows Ezio loves him, Ezio still whispers it to the artist as he kisses him,  _I love you_  in every breath they share, because some things, he believes, are too beautiful to be left unsaid.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Desmond!" The shout barely rouses Desmond from sleep. He ignores the voice completely, but they refuse to be ignored. " _Desmond!"_

"Go away." He pulls a pillow over his head, peeking out at the alarm clock. "It's six in the morning!Go _away!"_

"No, wake up." He now recognizes this as Shaun's voice, but Desmond still isn't motivated to wake up, although he does change his demand.

"Get back in bed and stop yelling." He almost thinks Shaun is listening to him, because the historian has climbed onto the bed, but he only yanks the pillow away from Desmond.

"Get up, Desmond."

"No." He curls up under the blankets, "just so you know, six is too early to be awake."

"I woke up at five."

"Normal people wake up at  _eight._ "

"Now what would  _you_ know about  _normal_ people, honestly?" Shaun pulls the blankets away too, and Desmond groans, "this is  _important."_

"You think everything is important," Desmond grumbles.

"Well, you'll think this is important to," he insists. Desmond reluctantly looks up; Shaun is sitting on the bed next to him, looking at him expectantly, brown eyes bright. Desmond knows this look. He's never been able to resist it, and he knows it will be his undoing every time.

"What'd you find out?" he surrenders, and Shaun looks pleased with the victory.

"You wanted to know if Ezio and Leonardo stayed together, right?"

"Yeah…" Desmond can't explain the urgency he feels to know this; he's tried to figure out how to explain it, but it sounds ridiculous even in his own thoughts. It feels like a parallel, he can't explain, it feels like, if he could only know whether everything worked out for Leonardo and Ezio, if it did, he and Shaun could make it, too. Desmond feels this like it's been imprinted into who he is, like a promise his history made to him.

"They did!" Shaun says, beaming like he somehow knows how immensely important this is to Desmond, although he can't, really. "I figured it out, you know the database entry on Leonardo?"

"Yeah." That's been worrying Desmond a little, too; it says Leonardo's lover was his assistant, a thieving man he loved his whole life, star crossed in a time when it meant secrecy cursed. Desmond can't honestly believe Leonardo would have been too bothered by that; he saw,  _felt,_ the way Leonardo was with Ezio, the way he was wholly happy. It doesn't seem possible he could have moved on to a second lover.

"His lover was his assistant, Salai," Shaun says, the groundbreaking excitement of whatever he hasn't told Desmond yet making him talk fast and forget to make his accent easy to understand, "and all the records say that, of course, it's accepted as a fact, but then I found accounts of other people of the time, who met him, and they all say the same thing-"

"Slow down," Desmond begs, still half asleep.

"It was really Ezio," Shaun says, "they told people that was his name, so they wouldn't know it was him. All along, his lover, it was always Ezio!"

"They really did stay together," Desmond says, and it's like suddenly, he knows everything will turn out right, like everything's fit into place and nothing, nothing can change it, like every doubt has been made a promise. He pulls Shaun down and kisses him, doesn't attempt to explain any of this to him because it couldn't possibly make any sense.

"You don't have to worry anymore," Shaun says softly, kisses him gently, "about them. Or us. Never again."

He knew the entire time. Desmond doesn't have to ask himself how, because even though he never told Shaun, he should have realized Shaun would have heard anyways. He never even had to wonder how to explain, because Shaun always knew.

Shaun knows Desmond loves him, but Desmond tells him anyways, to make sure, to promise, because even though Shaun hears  _I love you_ in his silence, it makes the world that much more beautiful when it can be heard in both the spoken and the silent universe.


	9. Chapter 9

The room is only cool moonlight when the assassin is thrown from sleep, breathing hard and heart racing. He still expects to see the advancing enemies on all sides, the corner he's worked himself into, no escape, none. That sound still echoes in his head, that wrenching cry that tore straight to his heart and ripped away everything that matters to him, all he has. This fear is always with him, keeps him on an edge, teetering over panic, because it feels so dangerous to care so much about just one single thing in the world. It feels like he's testing fate, taunting it, as he balances on that knife edge and shouts at the sky of fate above,  _see this? This is all I care about, right there, he's everything to me, you can't hurt me except through him. This is my everything._ He can't help it, he can't stop. Once he realized he didn't want to care so deeply, he already did, and once he realized how dangerous it was to need so desperately, he already did. He's always been one step behind himself in this, and this delay sharpens that knife edge, scares him, scares him so much.

The stillness of the room counters his panic, as if trying to calm him. It doesn't work; he flinches when he feels a hand on his arm, the sudden touch almost frightening.

"What's wrong?" the sleepy voice is laced with concern, as his lover disentangles himself slowly from sleep. The sight of his lover tangled in the sheets floods him with relief, and he has to resist the urge to pull him close and hold him until the last vestiges of the nightmare go away. This fear recedes like ocean waves, he's come to find, because even as it's abating, it's always creeping back up on him, locked into this cycle of waxing and waning.

"What time is it?" he asks instead.

"Doesn't matter. Does it change anything? What is it?" His gaze finds the assassin's face, studying him. Concern flickers against the shadow of fear in his eyes; the assassin has always felt so guilty that it's his fault his lover can never be truly free of fear, always just as on edge as the assassin himself. He wishes that his lover, so brilliant and so extraordinary, could be above such human suffering, but maybe they are somewhere far away from the extent grief could be waged upon them. Everything could be so much worse, but the assassin doesn't dare feel lucky. The assassin ghosts cool fingers across his cheek, fear in his eyes as he struggles to see only his lover before him, not the nightmare beyond them.

"I dreamed I lost you. It was all my fault." Being with his brilliant lover now only frightens him further- waking up alone, without him, would be agony, would kill him.

"You won't, you won't," the assassin's panic has upset him, it always does, "don't lose me," he pleads, voice soft in the night that has become dark and terrifying, "or yourself. Don't." He turns his face into the assassin's chest, holding onto him, "I love you," he whispers, voice muffled. The assassin wraps his arms around his lover, the only way to assure himself that nothing's happened, that they're still both here, that nothing he dreamed has happened. Moments like this, this is when he dares to feel lucky – he can wake up, and all the terror can be pushed back into the nonexistent universe in which it lives, where he hopes it will stay.

"If I lost you-"

"Don't, don't say anything," his lover insists, "I know. Me too."

The dark swallows up his lover's distraught whimpers, but the assassin still hears them. This is his lover's worst fear and recurring nightmare, being lost again.  _I'm never letting you go,_ the assassin promises in every touch, and he feels his lover respond as he clings, hears his lover's silent promise in return,  _I'll never leave you._

"I'm not going to lose you," the assassin murmurs as he collects this trembling brilliance into his arms, "I'm staying right here. Every night."

Every night, for more years than the world has numbers for, the assassin and his brilliant lover say nothing and feel everything. The words change and so do the faces, but every night, every night since and for forever, everything stays the beautiful same.


End file.
